Enomaly opens clearinghouse for cloud capacity

A new service from infrastructure-as-a-service platform vendor Enomaly is aimed at creating a trading market for cloud capacity by leveraging unused computing resources and letting cloud service providers buy and sell capacity.

The service, called SpotCloud, is designed to connect cloud service providers to companies with excess capacity they can resell. In addition, IT professionals looking for cloud capacity can go to the service to try and buy it for less than they otherwise could. SpotCloud acts as a conduit, intermediating the sale between buyers and sellers.

A report on GigaOm calls SpotCloud “an Adsense for cloud computing,” noting that the buyers of capacity are likely to determine the success of such a market.

“Still, the nascent SpotCloud has a long way to go before achieving any level of success, much less anything comparable to AdSense. In order to do so, it will have to convince buyers, not sellers, that there are legitimate uses for this type of capacity. AdSense doesn’t pay off for anyone unless site visitors click on ads, and SpotCloud won’t pay off unless someone is buying capacity.”

Though SpotCloud is targeted at cloud service providers as a way to sell (and buy and resell) unused capacity, it could be a boon to IT pros as well, because it has the potential to open a much broader market of cloud services and capacity—at a potentially much lower cost. SpotCloud also touts several tools that service providers and third-party capacity partners can use to enrich their cloud services—including location, price and quality—in an effort to make it more attractive to end buyers. For users of cloud services, having one place to go and the flexibility to choose from multiple providers is always likely to produce a better cloud experience.